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#265 - Focusing Employee Potential & New Machines?
193 Plays3 years ago
TOPICS:
- Grimsmo is expanding!
- Never Split The Difference - Buy Now
- Dedicating employees are doing so much more!
- Saunders had a dumpster fire of a morning.
- Grimsmo probing issues on the Kern.
- Saunders is thinking about getting a Brother Speedio before Grimsmo pulls the trigger on theirs.
- Small business healthcare in the USA.
- CMM fixture plates for Grimsmo's new Zeiss CMM.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to 'The Business of Machining'
00:00:00
Speaker
Good morning and welcome to the business of machining episode 265. My name is John Grimsmo. My name is John Saunders.
The Hiring Challenge: Why More Hands are Needed
00:00:07
Speaker
This being the podcast where John and I talk about all things business and I want to talk about hiring a new employee. Oh, okay. Yeah. We've been talking about this for the longest time, especially in the, well,
00:00:22
Speaker
We just need more people. There's so much that's not getting done or everybody's slammed and so busy that, you know, they're running around and that's a good thing. Um, you know what? We don't have lazy employees. We don't have, we want to grow. We want to do more. We want to accomplish more things.
Interview and Role Transition: From Machinist to Shop Assistant
00:00:39
Speaker
So that takes more people. Um, you know, we're trying to be as efficient as we can, but, uh, so anyway, we, a year and a half ago when we, um,
00:00:50
Speaker
put out the call out for a machinist job, which our guy Pierre ended up getting that, and he's been here for a year and a quarter, and it's been amazing. We were looking for a legit machinist, and he was. I know the person I'm talking about is listening to this podcast, but anyway, we had an interview yesterday. He came in because he applied for Pierre's job back then.
00:01:14
Speaker
wasn't qualified to be a full machinist. That's that's fine. Nothing wrong with that. He just wasn't. Anyway, we had him in yesterday to do like an in person interview meeting to see
00:01:27
Speaker
what he can do, what he's up to. Sort of what he's learned since last year? What he's learned since last year and what he's capable of.
Benefits of a Shop Assistant: Boosting Efficiency and Focus
00:01:34
Speaker
And what we need right now is not necessarily a full-blown machinist, but a shop assistant. We need somebody who can deeper parts, who can load machines basically, who can fill coolant, who can do shop assisting work, including anodizing in the front shop. And it's
00:01:54
Speaker
as we were going through it, like the person I'm talking about, I'm not saying it's guaranteed a job, but, um, it's looking promising. Yeah. Anyway. Um,
00:02:05
Speaker
As we were going through it and explaining all the work that has to get done, we're like, yeah, he does this job right now. He does this job right now. Everybody has a hand in this role. And if this role came in, it would free up a lot of time, like at least an hour to a day from each person's responsibilities, letting them focus on what they're best at and what they're most valuable at and letting this person come in and crush this, you know, setup job.
Realizing the Need for Expansion
00:02:29
Speaker
Um,
00:02:30
Speaker
So even just walking him through and explaining the role that made so much more sense, like, Oh yeah, we should have had this a long time ago. From what I say this humbly from what I've learned in living the day to day of the business today, when you say something like that, it's already, uh, it's already
00:02:55
Speaker
in enough demand to be a full-time job. It's not that you're in denial about it. It's just that I find that you just don't see. So you almost have to force yourself out of your comfort zone to realize, wait a minute here. I think a lot about bringing somebody else on the team. There's an obligation and sense of responsibility that
Shop Maintenance: Roles and Responsibilities
00:03:13
Speaker
comes along with that. And you've got to manage the team and so forth. Absolutely.
00:03:17
Speaker
It came up in a wonderful way. It came up when I was touring Dennis's shop and I mentioned this, I asked this on the video and I have a lot of respect for what Dennis has done. And so by no means do I want this to be interpreted as me challenging or criticizing how he's done it, but I asked about like maintenance and
00:03:33
Speaker
Um, so forth. And he, if I remember said, you know, basically kind of, Oh, we have different assigned tasks and different people take care of their own machines, kind of a, like what you said. And, and I am actively trying to move away from that. Um, to where I think somebody who can be responsible for that stuff, it's going to happen more frequently and better, and they're going to own it. Um, there's, there's, um, I think there's a lot to be said for.
Evolving Roles and Balancing Responsibilities
00:03:58
Speaker
what I saw in the third gen tour of like, no, but the person that's running that machine sells to take care of their own chip pan, like stuff like that, but like bigger term stuff.
00:04:07
Speaker
is it's the frog boiling water. You don't realize how much everyone's trying to multitask. Man, if there's one thing, when I sit down and I reflect, I love when I get to be a surgeon and focus on something and the same goes. Right now, Ed is wearing too many hats and I know that.
00:04:28
Speaker
And it comes at the expense of really good development in R&D and it's okay temporarily, but I'm guilty right now of temporarily becoming too much.
00:04:40
Speaker
chronic temporarily-ness. Smile. Yes. All of the yeses. Because as the responsibilities grow and each role grows and each person grows, they're taking on more. And I see that in our shop. Guys have been here for a couple of years now and they're taking on more and more and more.
Role Specialization vs. Generalization
00:04:59
Speaker
Their job description now is different than it was when they started because they're smarter, they're more capable. Some things that were hard are now easy, so they're doing it in less time.
00:05:07
Speaker
more room to grow but they're still spread out like using your surgeon example when a legit surgeon walks into the operating room with his hands up.
00:05:15
Speaker
He didn't prep the room. I don't know. I'm not a doctor. No, for sure. Yeah. It's a great point. That's not to say that a machinist should not understand his machine and know that the cooling concentration is this and know that the tools are good. He needs to know these things and I don't want to offload so much of the maintenance and responsibilities and delegation to
00:05:38
Speaker
this maintenance person that the machinist just assumes everything's perfect because machinists can't assume anything. But there has to be a balance of if you're a highly paid machinist and you're spending eight hours vacuuming out a chip tray.
00:05:58
Speaker
Your value is best used elsewhere sometimes. Not always.
Business Hierarchy and Respect
00:06:02
Speaker
I still do messy, cheap work and you still do messy, cheap work and it has to be done. It's just being conscious of it and allocating our resources whether it's time or money or people in the best way.
00:06:18
Speaker
We, I've been thinking a lot about my grandfather lately who passed away four years ago, but was what continues to be influential on me. And he, you know, he ran a fabrication shop, so a little bit more rough and tumble, but nevertheless in the kind of metal building world. And, um, a lot of similar roles, if you will, are parallels of, um, the skilled welders versus the set up guys versus the deeper grind guys, all that. Oh my gosh, it's all the same, you know? Yeah. Um, and he, I've spoken to.
00:06:48
Speaker
many people that very much loved working for him, even though, frankly, he was a word I'm not allowed to say on the podcast because this is family friendly. He was a real, he could be a real difficult person and I admire him for, not admire him, I want to emulate him because it's not about the personal connection of me, it's about the company and what makes, what I'm trying to articulate here is that
00:07:19
Speaker
I care a lot about bringing, so we actually need to hire as well. I'll come back to that. And the person coming in, um, it could be a similar role, but kind of what you're saying. And you could view from an organization or org chart that that person is lower or subordinate and that is true. And that's okay. Like that is what it is. What I care about is ensuring there's always bi-directional respect and
00:07:43
Speaker
Yeah. I have zero tolerance for, and we have not had this issue that I'm aware of, so I'm not trying to make an issue of something that doesn't exist, but I want the young new guy who wants to hustle to be as valued and respected even though that stuff is, and I guess that sounds cheesy when I say it.
Trust, Respect, and Company Goals
00:08:02
Speaker
It's like everyone think that way, but like, no, there's a sense of obligation.
00:08:06
Speaker
and not ever get, no one's too good for anything, but on the flip side, you've got assigned roles and you need to do your work. You make sense? As an owner, I try to look at it as I want everybody to respect each other equally and ideally trust each other equally.
00:08:24
Speaker
But the divide, the org chart hierarchy basically just comes down to your pay. If you're super skilled and super valuable, you will make more money. And if you're super new, you'll make less money. But otherwise, I want the trust and respect to be similar across the board. Does that make sense?
00:08:43
Speaker
Yeah, we're all here. It's not just that more money gets more trust, more respect, you get more responsibility, but that's a different thing. I don't know, I don't know how to convey that or keep that culture, that mentality, because I don't even know how to put into words fully yet.
00:09:02
Speaker
I'm reading the book called Never Split the Difference. I've heard of it. Negotiating book. I actually read it four or five years ago. I'm rereading it, which I'm loving this. I might just keep rereading books for the next period of time. And he makes a really good interview point
00:09:18
Speaker
from a candidate. And this needs to be sincere, but it's also a little bit of a great way to put yourself in an unusually good position with an interview, which is the question from the potential job hired person is, six months down the road, what do you envision is the best things I can be doing to help this company in my job do the best it can be?
00:09:43
Speaker
And it's kind of puts that mentality forth that I love, which is that what is everybody doing here that helps Saunders machine works. And I'll tell you, we've had, um, I want to, uh, mention these things cause they live in my head and sometimes I've got to make sure that Julie's been doing work on order forecasting and production planning and inventory that has been exceptional. And I don't like how it's being done with the kind of labor intensive right now, but
00:10:10
Speaker
It needed to be done this way, and then we're going to start morphing that into Lex. We're getting that info from Lex.
Celebrating Achievements and Hiring Announcements
00:10:16
Speaker
It's just a little bit cumbersome right now, but we need that info because it's wonderful. Then what Ed is doing both on some of the fixture and R&D stuff as well as just helping plan out the shop is great. Grant figured out some really good stuff on how we're doing matched plates.
00:10:34
Speaker
It's just absolutely exceptional. Garrett, who was in high school 12 months ago, has really stepped into his own effectively running three machines, making a substantial quantity of our products because they're shorter, quicker time stuff. It's really awesome. I'm incredibly proud of where we're at. I think we need to remind ourselves that we're facing a lot of challenges.
00:10:56
Speaker
on Wednesday, March 23rd, today, or Friday, the 25th for the listeners. So there's a lot of things that are on all of our minds right now, but I'm reminding like, hold on. No, but look at where we're at. This is great. Yeah, that's what's always tough is to step back and to be like, wow, the shop is humming. It's busy. Our current's running 24 hours a day, six days a week.
00:11:18
Speaker
Things are really good and we're making improvements and we're getting faster and we're getting more efficient, we're getting more profitable and we're getting more staff and everybody's got more responsibility. And people are coming up with amazing inventions and tweaks and improvements and things like that. But man, the day to day when there's a coolant spill or there's a delivery that didn't happen or there's an issue or something, you forget about all the good.
00:11:43
Speaker
Yes. I had a dumpster fire of a morning yesterday, which I'd like to share. But before I share that, I do want to put out a PSA. We are hiring as well. We are looking for a full-time machinist, somebody that has some experience that can step in and help us run both our Haas and Akuma machines. If anyone's interested, we are here in Zanesville, Ohio, for those that may not know.
00:12:07
Speaker
We would love to talk to candidates and we're also hiring a full-time sort of operations and order fulfillment person. So helping prep orders, helping do QC, use the forklift to unload trucks that come, load up trucks on the way out and so forth. We've had somebody in that position and it's kind of what you said we now know that that was a role that a bunch of us were sharing and it absolutely is done better and needs to be a full-time position.
00:12:35
Speaker
Yeah. So I would welcome anyone who wants to come onto the team. I'd love to tell you about what would do great and what we're looking to do even better and see if it's
Diverse Contributions Beyond Job Descriptions
00:12:44
Speaker
a good fit. Right. That's awesome. Good for you guys. So on that note real quick, it's funny. Like for you, Julie is your, I'm using air quotes here, she's your video editor and Fraser is my video editor. Yeah, right.
00:13:00
Speaker
Fraser spends probably 4% of his month editing videos. That's funny. I don't know how much Julie does, but it sounds like she's doing a lot more than just that.
00:13:12
Speaker
It's a lot more time than that. I don't pay attention to it. I'm pretty sure it is. You're actually posting videos and we're not.
Adaptability in Managing Workplace Challenges
00:13:20
Speaker
It's a great point, which is that I've always viewed YouTube as something I enjoy, a way to pay it forward, a way to share, but it's never been our thing. I don't want to ever be an influencer for the sake of being an influencer or BS or sponsorship like that.
00:13:36
Speaker
It's become the case that we continue to do videos partly to, if I'm being honest, to kind of appease the YouTube algorithm of continuing to post regularly. But look, Julie's value in her role is more so what she's doing on the operations and stuff side. Yeah. It's funny to think about because
00:14:00
Speaker
It's just so easy to put labels on people. Even within our company, some of the guys think that Fraser is the video editor and why are we making videos? He must not be doing anything. Meanwhile, I'm shoving so much work on his plate, operations admin, things like that, that he's busy. He's very busy. It's cool.
00:14:22
Speaker
So my dumpster fire of a morning, which I'm sharing both because that's a way of laughing about it now, a day later, but also because I've never enjoyed, as I've said before, I've never enjoyed the folks that just say everything's always great. We had an HR issue yesterday morning, which was not insignificant.
00:14:41
Speaker
I showed up to work early because of that aforementioned topic, as well as I wanted to get a head start on a couple things. And I was going to be in my second day of full day Okuma training on the horizontal, which is going great.
Training and Problem Solving for New Machinery
00:14:54
Speaker
And I'll come back to that. But so I show up early.
00:14:57
Speaker
to put out fires and get ahead of things. And the one of our delivery trucks was here sitting in the parking lot at like 720 and no one was here to unload it. And I told the guys like, we don't know if it's eight, which they've never come before eight. And then he's like, okay, I'll wait. And I was like, I can't make this guy wait. And it's not a big deal to grab the forklift and unloaded, but it's just like one more thing. And then I coincided and the light switch broke. So the lights didn't turn on. I got that fixed. Um, and that was really it. So, and I guess in hindsight, it doesn't sound that crazy, but, um,
00:15:27
Speaker
It's definitely difficult to dedicate a full day of training about multiple days, which is just the reality of it. Especially after that kind of stuff happening in the morning, like HR issues are always emotional and heavy.
00:15:43
Speaker
you know, they weigh on you. And then you got to spend the whole day in training trying to focus and be a surgeon. In the back of your mind is going, yeah, but you know, stuff. Yeah, I get it. Yeah, but it's good. I got to give a huge shout out. The Gossager application engineer we have is exceptionally good.
00:16:02
Speaker
We are spending a lot of, basically we're only spending time writing probing macro routines right now, which is absolutely awesome. Maybe a little bit backward because I need to then, I basically need to send him home and spend a week or two setting up some more tombstones and fixtures and cutting some parts, but I've learned the basics of what I need to learn and I am fired up about it. It's great.
00:16:26
Speaker
This is all for the 40 millimeter horizontal with the pout pool and tool changer and all that. That's awesome. So I guess you're ready to go. You're making tombstones.
00:16:41
Speaker
Yeah, we figured out, we got our butt kicked on some trigonometry yesterday that was giving us good probing data, but bad results. Really? So we both, we called it a day, which is what you have to do just at like six o'clock. I was like, no, we need to stop. And thought about it some more. We both came back with some suggestions and to his credit, we got to figure it out basically first thing. You and the Gossinger guy or you and Ed?
00:17:05
Speaker
Gossager got it. I'd also been thinking about a way of breaking down. We're basically probing a semi occluded feature.
Machining Precision and Troubleshooting
00:17:15
Speaker
It's really difficult to sweep in what you're probing because it's occluded and you can't get an indicator to it. I realized what we could do is actually change the fixture, hold the part with magnets so that we can actually no longer have it occluded and just run the same probing routine where we can also sweep it in to start validating
00:17:30
Speaker
Okay, step one probes this, what does it actually measure? And then step two does this and this, and where's our math wrong? It's confusing because we're probing two points, but we're cutting along a longer plane, so you're getting different values because their angle is no different, but the nominal delta, like the rise over the run of the triangle change, it's been super fun, but you know what it's like, right? When you're in that, in the wings like that.
00:17:54
Speaker
I actually got to share hilarious. I told Jane that I was in training this week for the new machine. She looked at me and she goes, why would you even buy it if you don't know how to use it? This is a five-year-old. Then I said, well, I'm doing this and that's different because I don't really run the machines that much anymore. William looks at me and goes, you don't run the machines anymore? I go, most of the time, no. He goes, what do you do at work?
00:18:23
Speaker
I'm like, oh my God, laying on thick kids. Oh man, that's amazing. Yeah, it's funny what they, what they observe. Yeah. Yeah. No, I get the same for my kids. Yeah.
00:18:35
Speaker
How are you doing? Good. Similar probing issue. So on the current, I'm making these adapter plates that will adapt a shunk pneumatic pallet system to stuff, to the umbrella base and stuff. Anyway, so I'm trying to make this bore that's like, I don't know, four inches, five inches in diameter. I forget exactly what it is. But I want it to be tense. So I rough machine it, I probe, and then I offset the wear comp for that tool. And then I come in and I finish machine.
00:19:06
Speaker
It should be straightforward and simple, but the bore is always showing up like sixth out too big. Sixth out? Yeah. On what machine? A current. So clearly I'm doing something wrong. Yeah. So after scrapping the first part by making the board just a little bit too big, I was like, well, let me just keep making it bigger.
00:19:25
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. Test my theory. And this was a couple days ago. And I just, one time it was fourth out bigger, but the next time it was sixth out bigger, and then sixth out again, and like bang on, like within two tenths of sixth out. And I'm like, where am I getting this wrong? I don't know.
00:19:41
Speaker
Yeah, because you machine it small and then you probe the hole and you tell it it's small. Here's the value it's supposed to be and here's what it actually is and offset the difference and then machine again full size and I don't know I had to go home because I'm like it's late and I got I got to get this current running and I kind of had to shelf it for now and I haven't gotten back to it yet, but kind of one of those frustrating things like it should be easy.
00:20:02
Speaker
Are you using built-in fusion inspect stuff with Heidenhine? Okay, I'm assuming that doesn't exist yet. I think that's only kind of only Haas. Yeah, I think you're right. Okay. So I'm using the Heidenhine probing routines, whatever, which I've used before many times.
00:20:24
Speaker
I don't know. I feel silly, but the mistake is somewhere. Yeah, that's crazy. I'm leaving three thou radial stock for the finished pass and the whole is six thou too small diameter. There's something in there because it's the same number. Oh, we were in that trap team too. You know what I mean? We were having and doubling things and is it coincidence or? Right. But I think it's right, but it's clearly not right. Something. Yeah.
00:20:52
Speaker
We were doing similar things. We were re-probing the same thing to make sure probing was repeating consistently. Then obviously, if you're starting from a block, cut a two-inch hole and practice there, get yourself plenty of resets and you can try two and a half inches and you can try three inches.
Continuous Improvement in Machining
00:21:09
Speaker
What happens if you just try to cut it three inches amount? Yeah, exactly. Yeah, good question. When you leave three thou,
00:21:20
Speaker
radial that should be six style under agree. Yeah. So what's that measure? It's measuring.
00:21:27
Speaker
Within tenths of that perfect size of under and you're doing like four string passes. I'm guessing. Yeah There's a weird I'm calling it a bug. But when you click in 2d contour when you click multiple passes Yeah, it goes weird. It doesn't do what I think it's supposed to do and that's how I scrapped the first part a couple weeks ago doing the same thing multiple like
00:21:50
Speaker
I was dialing it in. Repeat finish pass or multiple finishing passes? Two different buttons. Yes, agreed. Multiple finishing passes. Okay. Which sounds like it should just move it in by 5,000, 5,000, 5,000, but it made it bigger and I don't know why. That seems odd. They need to investigate more. Are you using computer comp, wear comp, or cutter comp? I use either computer comp when I don't care about the size or cutter comp when I do care about the size.
00:22:20
Speaker
So in cutter comp, you're putting the full tool diameter in the control. Okay. That's a big, not red flag, but like risk point, if you will, yeah. Around why they're different. Cause if you're roughing without it and then you're switching to it on. That's true. They usually, I mean, they usually measure a little bit under nominal, even all the roughing. Yeah. All the roughing passes, um, are calculated for on size tool. Yeah. Okay. Got it. Um,
00:22:49
Speaker
So yeah, I mean, it's just one of those rabbit holes you just have to spend time on and understand, you know, and ideally come up with a recipe that just you have now. This is a four inch ID bore.
Learning from Errors to Prevent Future Mistakes
00:23:04
Speaker
Yes. How are you measuring it? With the probe itself on the current. Well, that's not recommended. Yeah.
00:23:13
Speaker
I'm not shooting for millions here. I'm shooting for not too big. I know. But I would spot check it. Do you have an ID mic or? Of calipers. And I have the part that's sloppy now when it says too big. OK. Yeah, I know. But you should buy, even if you buy a cheapo ID mic, it looks like a
00:23:35
Speaker
two pins with the center thing in the middle. You could measure that offline with a micrometer, but don't measure with your... You probably have a bigger issue, but I would not be measuring the feature with your probe, so you're having probing problems. Yeah, to confirm that everything is right in the world. Yeah. Well, that's what the CMM is going to be for.
00:23:57
Speaker
Well, I should say that too. Or do make yourself easy. Go cut an OD feature, which you can measure with a hand mic. Yeah, yeah. And that works. If it works, then we've got a weirder issue. That's way easier to measure. Yeah. And actually, to your point, instead of the next time I make this, instead of going to the full four inch diameter, whatever it's supposed to be, make a three inch and try to hit that.
Considering New Machinery for Enhanced Production
00:24:22
Speaker
And then you have a lot of room to keep going bigger because there's like six hours of machining in this part.
00:24:28
Speaker
Oh, yeah. Holy cow. Yeah. Speaking of cool machines, there's like a small chance we buy a brother before you shut up. Can I have it? No, I just like part of what we, so in this manager's meeting that I briefly mentioned last week, we started talking about, you know, what's going well, what's not going well. And
00:24:50
Speaker
where we're at capacity or stuff and so forth. Then our Haas DT is slammed. It's doing great, but it's slammed. We make quite a few different products on it, and the horizontal is already showing us the wonder of being able to just automatically swap out fixturing. That's what a horizontal does.
00:25:12
Speaker
what I want to look seriously at soon. I need to get this horizontal running first. I want to look seriously at a Brother R650 X2, which is the bigger one. There's the 450 and the 650. Yeah, more travel. I guess I should look closely to see if the 450 would work. I suspect we'll want the 650, but it's a twin pallet vertical. So it has two setups, which we can allow for redundancy of the same part. So you're basically setting it up while the other side's running.
00:25:38
Speaker
we'd be able to set up two different parts, which I suspect might be what we do. I think you can get it with up to 40 tools, which gives us enough mix in the tool changer to run a lot of these product families that are pretty similar. So you were running metric mod vices while the other side, the operator setting up top jaws or something, and then it swaps around. Boy, that'd be a huge time saver for us.
00:26:03
Speaker
Just like all verticals, machining centers, when you read about shops, they're like 20 to, I'm making this up, 20%, 50% spindle uptime. It just is. You got to load it. You got to load it. Yeah. Well, and that's the beauty of the current with the Pallet Changer is it's always running. The only time it's not running is if there's a problem or if somebody left the Pallet Changer door open.
00:26:26
Speaker
Yeah, it's funny. And then it just waits, and then you close the door, and it keeps going. So we're always loading fixtures and loading pellets while the machine is machining something else.
Remote Management and Technological Advancements
00:26:35
Speaker
Yes, it's incredible. And actually, last night, I had to tweak one of our little parts. They're these Delrin etching plugs that we capture both sides of the blade so that when we etch them in ferric chloride to make them black, they don't etch the bearing surfaces and all the critical features and stuff.
00:26:52
Speaker
So I've got these Delrin plugs that cinch on there for the acid bath. And I had to tweak them, modify one of the clearances by a few thou so that the etched line would be in a better place.
00:27:03
Speaker
Anyway, so last night before I went home, I loaded a piece of Delrin in the vice, and then I was like, okay, it's pallet 14, it's scheduled ready to go, but I need to tweak the program. So I go home late at night, 11 o'clock, I tweak the program, and then I post the new code, and then I VNC into the current, and then I schedule it, and it's scheduled to run about 1230 this afternoon.
00:27:24
Speaker
And from home, that's so amazing to be able to do. That is amazing. And I trust it because I've done this before. Yeah, yeah. That sounds crazy to me, but with experience, it's not. In the beginning, it is, of course. But yeah, it's fun to be able to do that kind of stuff now. Yeah.
00:27:42
Speaker
I have a request. Oh, first of all, I have a thank you Harrison. You are a good man. Oh, yeah. He sent me some awesome info and examples of Akuma probing and just it reminds me of the absolute wonders of whatever you want to call the social nature of the world we live in between podcasts and media and social media, etcetera of, you know, the world better place. I really appreciate him.
00:28:06
Speaker
it forward by helping us. He was very grateful about the complimentary of the podcast, which is great.
Healthcare Benefits for Small Business Employees
00:28:12
Speaker
Thank you, sir. I have another question, which is, we're continuing to revisit, like we do every year, small business healthcare in the United States. It just seems crummy. I feel like I've exhausted a lot of options, including talking to local insurance agent or brokers, as well as even looking at joining a trade group like NTMA, which ends up
00:28:32
Speaker
I think just being the same thing as finding coverage. I thought that would be the ability for us to piggyback onto a huge policy. All of a sudden from a healthcare perspective, we're a subsidiary of four or something like that, but it ends up it was basically a broker called us with plans that they negotiated, but it was still not helping the fact that we have so few employees.
00:28:53
Speaker
If anybody has any insights or suggestions or has been down this rabbit hole, I'd welcome any suggestions or input or would be happy to even pay you for your time if you want to debrief us because I'd like to make an educated, intelligent decision. And it's a totally foreign topic, but boy, I'd love to be in a place where we offer healthcare in a way that made sense, given that we're so potentially under five employees who would actually take the policy. That makes sense.
00:29:22
Speaker
Yeah, I hope you find something. Being in Canada, you know, Canada has relatively free healthcare, like doesn't cost you anything to have a baby or have an operation, anything like that. But then we also implemented benefit plans for all of our employees two or three years ago. Okay. That gives you additional like dental coverage, vision, glasses, massage, things like that, that are up to a certain limit per year. And we've been supplying that to all of our employees and
00:29:49
Speaker
It's fun to kind of review it at the end of the year and see who used what because the plan changes and evolves over time. They give you so much at the beginning, but they're like, nobody's using this and nobody's using that and everybody's crushing their dental. So let's up the dental limit a little bit and then lower some of the other ones and we'll balance it year by year.
00:30:09
Speaker
prescriptions are mostly covered, things like that. I know some of the employees are just blown away because they're like, I used to spend hundreds of dollars a month on this thing and now, thank you. I think part of what makes it so much harder in the US is these
00:30:25
Speaker
privacy things would take, they're rooted in good intentions, but it means like insurance companies can't ask certain questions and it's not appropriate for the company to ask questions of the employees, which I don't really want to know, like it's none of my business, except it's like I'm trying to solve a problem. Anyway, if anybody has any insights, by all means, please reach out. John at sauntersmachineworks.com is by far the best way to get ahold of me. Perfect. Yeah, best of luck with that. Yeah. What do you do today?
00:30:52
Speaker
Today, I got a couple of phone calls to make. I get to call the Canada Revenue Agency and not a big deal, just some admin stuff. I got to wrap up the Zeiss purchase.
00:31:05
Speaker
Awesome. Just fine-tuning the, I know we talked about CMM fixtures. Yeah. The ones that my local rep, Elliot Metsouros is suggesting is from Inspection Arsenal, I think it is. Okay. If you haven't seen them, you should look them up because it's really curious for you to look at. They make these fixture plates that are similar to yours except they have magnets stuck in the side and they kind of magnet together. I know. And it's cool. It's really cool. Yeah. And so they have like a starter kit that I'm like, you know,
00:31:33
Speaker
I don't know if we'd use it for everything, but it's one of those things, if I'm getting the machine, it might be nice to always have with the machine so that we're capable to measure the kind of parts that that can hold. So I might get that. Otherwise, once I decide on that, then the machines just assign the PO and we're good to go. Awesome.
00:31:53
Speaker
What is, do you know what that starter kit costs? $2,600, something like that. The US. Got it. It comes with like four plates, a plate for your calibration ball that magnets in place. You can always pull it out. This like side retainer thingy that stays on the table. You can either bolt it down or double-sided tape it kind of semi-permanently.
Anodizing Process Improvements and Scheduling
00:32:12
Speaker
It's got the little like straight line with a little bump in it. Yep. Yep. Exactly.
00:32:18
Speaker
It seems like a really well done kit. They have a lot of great videos on the YouTube channel, great website, great PDF order catalog, which is one of the first times I actually kind of enjoyed going through the PDF catalog.
00:32:31
Speaker
as opposed to like all the individual product pages on a website because I'm like, I can just scroll be like not interested. Okay, that's kind of cool. Let me look into that. It was well done. And I was like, Wow, for, you know, the first time me learning about this company, and I saw their plates when I was at Elliott Metzer at two weeks ago, I was like, these are pretty darn nice. So it's been been on our radar. Yeah, which is great. Yeah, good for you guys.
00:32:56
Speaker
Yeah, we thought about that too. Is that something I would value? If all of a sudden snap our fingers, we had a Saunders Machine Works product PDF, like a catalog. The fixture plates would probably be summarized like, hey, we have Haas and we have Tormach and we have all these other models, but it wouldn't have a page per because it's kind of one size fits all, like different.
00:33:15
Speaker
configurations, but ultimately not worth going into all the deviations of minor nuances of T-SOS based on work. But then, hey, a page on fiction, a page on mod vice, a page on case studies. Like I think that could be valuable, but it's a great example of an idea is worth squat. Is that something we want to go do? Certainly beyond our in-house skill sets. So do we want to find somebody on Upwork and creating a catalog? I think it's good, but I don't think it's the lowest I need for it.
00:33:41
Speaker
Yeah, exactly right. And that's what tough like, you know, it would have value, but doesn't have enough value to make the cut, you know, to get done. It's not the money, it's time like, it'll be your time, or at least one of your highly knowledgeable employees time to organize all that information and to, you know, yeah, catalog it. Yeah. We did a great kind of
00:34:05
Speaker
realization and coming of age is, uh, how we are now handling our anodizing for our aluminum fixture places.
Optimizing Inventory and Production Scheduling
00:34:12
Speaker
We used to kind of just send it when we sent it. And, um, now what we've done is completely flip that on his head. Um, and we are, this is all kind of tentative, but so far it's working out pretty well where we're saying every two weeks on a certain date, we have a crate heading out to anodize. So now, number one, there's consistency on both our side and for the vendor to know.
00:34:35
Speaker
what's happening. And that crate has 10 slots. It actually has 12, but we're leaving ourselves two for buffer or emergency. And so then what we do is we look at outstanding orders or inventory that's low relative to historical sales, and we're saying, okay, that's what's going to go into these 10 slots. And if in between the time we're making those, if we have an extra order come out that happens to be something we don't have in stock, we could bump a inventory production plate for a sale plate
00:35:03
Speaker
And we now know how to communicate with our customers about when the scheduled timing is for that. We offer, but frankly, discourage an expedite because it's just so expensive and disruptive to expedite it. But nevertheless, it helps us just know where we are in that. And it's what I wanted, which is that I want if somebody tours our business or sees how we do stuff to say, oh my gosh.
00:35:26
Speaker
Yeah, on this date that this thing goes, these are the slots for it. This is how they're getting made. This is who's making them. And we back into that. And it's awesome. That's amazing. You put a schedule on one feature when that gets shipped out. And now you can organize the schedule around everything else, what production happens, what orders are happening. Your vendor now has consistency, which vendors always love. That's cool. Yeah.
00:35:52
Speaker
It's good. It's moving. It's a good example of how we're moving in the right direction. Yep. But it's also a good example of, I guess something you might not have thought about before is, you know, you're like, we always send batches to anodizing when they're ready, you know, when they're, maybe you don't have a trigger enough, or, I don't know, was it more quantity based trigger as to when it gets shipped?
00:36:17
Speaker
So as the business owner, you always want to do things as you always want to please the customers. So what would happen is sometimes we would only have four plates ready, but one of those plates might be for an order that had just come in. And the last thing we want to do is sit on that for an arbitrary amount of time when we figure out whether or not we're going to add more plates to it. But we also don't want to send the crate that's almost empty.
00:36:40
Speaker
Because it's quite expensive to send things to and from. So what we realized is this solves, this basically solves all these problems. Number one, the best way to solve the problem is to try to always have it in inventory. And that's also part of what we're doing. But this gives us a system. It's great. Nice. And I guess if you had to skip a week, you could.
00:37:01
Speaker
Yeah, you could. Sure. If you had plenty of inventory and you were ahead of the game, it makes it easier to skip a week than to always be late or always playing catch up or something like that. Oh, that's a good point. Yeah, sure.
00:37:15
Speaker
So yeah. Well, I'm off to back to finish up. The Kuma's has been awesome. I still don't know how to assign programs to the tombstones or pallets and working more on offsets or coordinate system offsets about we're going to have a lot because one tombstone is going to have 30 of some offsets because of how we're doing some of the probing stuff. Probing each part and finding its own kind of reference.
00:37:42
Speaker
Only for some of the final critical datum. So it's actually really elegant because fusion is basically programming, you know a couple of
00:37:50
Speaker
datums per face of the tombstone, which I like. Um, but then on the final stuff, we're writing one program that gets mirrored across multiple offsets that does the batch probing. So it's super clean. It does a ton of work across. It's basically triggered by, you know, eight lines of code and it does a half an hours with the work. It's really cool. The probing probing plus the final cut. Right. Yeah.
00:38:16
Speaker
Whoa. That's what I'm really happy with is understanding how we use variables to basically do the same thing across multiple different offsets, storing these probe points, doing the trig, and then updating.
00:38:26
Speaker
as needed to comp. That's crazy. Yeah. That's awesome. Something to keep in mind is probing chips. Because if you're probing the finished holes or something like that, like how you clean those out. So how I do it on the current is I'll take a through coolant drill and I'll put it into the hole. And then I'll even take the same drill and run air through it and do the same drilling up again to kind of blow out the hole sometimes. Yeah. Things to keep in mind because I've probed chips before and it makes mistakes. Spin dry.
00:38:56
Speaker
Yeah, it doesn't do as good of a job as I wish it did the spin drive. But yeah, I think we'll do an air cool blast air blast and or we also know where the parts should be. So right now we have it set to do a feed hold alarm if it's out my more than a certain amount because I'd rather know it shouldn't be that far out and we can tweak that later. But if there's a
00:39:21
Speaker
Well, yeah, we'll see. Yep. And you put your safeties in place now that you can remove later if they never get hit. That's a great point. Yeah, for sure. Awesome. I'll see you next week. Yeah, man. All right. Enjoy your training. Thank you. Bye. Later.